So, the generation that made it possible for us to be speaking English and not German right now -- by sacrificing a lot for us, no less -- can also go to hell just so that we don't go through another recession. I hear you loud and clear. "Thanks for everything, grandma and grandpa, but now die." Not to mention all the other high-risk classes, immunocompromised and otherwise ill individuals regardless of age. But I guess they matter less too because they were weak and were gonna die eventually as well?

I do not want to live in a society that would be so eager and willing to cull its sick and elderly in order to protect its economy, which is what you are suggesting. In a first-world country - the greatest country on Earth, as so many tout - that's an abomination.

Dumbo, you get the thumb-o.

Don't play if you're afraid of getting sick.

And I won't read your stuff any more, in case the fear mentality is contagious.

Oh, wait.

It is.

I dont understand why speaking English or German makes any difference. If youre suggesting the world could still be under Nazi control without the US's involvement in World War 2, I think the political instabilities of such a far reaching dictatorship would have made that an impossibility for more than a decade after the end of war.. And that's not really the generation we are talking about here anyway, those people have mostly died 10-30 years ago. Maybe only a few % of them are left. The people that sacrificed for that freedom and those that benefited have passed on already.

The reason age matters is because death is inevitable. You are merely putting it off by being not being "culled". So it matters how many extra years of life you are getting.

Its not that the old and immunocompromised matter less, its that helping them is too costly for everyone else. You can making driving a car illegal too, and it would save all the idiots that would drive around recklessly and run into a tree and kill themselves. And inconvience everyone else. But we don't do that do we?

Think about it like this, if for every 1 immunocompromised or old person that benefits from social distancing, 100 others suffer, by forcing social distancing youre really saying that immunocompromised and old people matter more than other people, not less.

So I guess since most of the WWII-generation have passed as you say (including my grandmother, who died earlier this month shortly after contracting COVID), the boomer generation is next, my (our?) parents (aged 65 and therefore in higher-risk category) included. They certainly benefited from the sacrifices of their parents, just as we have. How many of them should go? Shall we cut many more of them for the good of the economy too? And what of all those otherwise sick and immunocompromised, but young? You never explained why their lives were worth any less than the common economic good.

And what do you say to the doctors and nurses working tirelessly to save lives, jobs which would be immensely harder if not for the policies that have been put in place up until now? (Compare Italy, where they had to choose which patients got beds and ventilators and which did not.)

Economies rebound over and over again throughout history, but we all only get one life. At bottom, what you are complaining of is mere economic strife, a temporary inconvenience. To use your car analogy, the measures we are employing now are like wearing a seat belt, and the pandemic is an impending car accident. People hemmed and hawed back then, too, but we made it happen because requiring seat belts saved lives. That was more important than the opinions of people complaining about how inconvenient and uncomfortable it was to wear them.

Once people started to die at a high clip and hospitals emergency rooms and ICU's were overrun people started to make the decision to not go out or when they went out to do so cautiously.

This started happening about a week before the first state issued a "shutdown" order.

The federal government has only issued guidance. Each state government has taken their own initiative based on how the onslaught hit their state.

lol.

If we had done nothing it is likely that about 70% of our population would have been infected. Probably more.

With a death rate unknown at present but likely at 0.5% to 0.8% (currently the death rate seems much higher in the US but that is because we have a limited idea of how many people actually have the disease).

So with no action taken to mitigate the damage, Covid-19 related deaths would have been between 1,000,000 and 2,000,000 in the US this year assuming that we could have treated everyone who got sick.

However, because hospitals would have been overrun as they were in Italy, many more would have died due to lack of treatment (ventilators save about 20% to 30% of patients).

The other problem is that people with other deadly ailments would be less likely to get treatment in a hospital and some would die at home afraid of going to the hospital and getting infected.

No.

What we are doing is giving the government time to set up proper testing and tracing.

The tracing is starting now in many states. But the testing is still screwed up because of the way the government (including the CDC) has handled it to date.

If you look at countries that have ramped up testing effectively and do contact tracing, like South Korea, Australia, New Zealand and even Germany, you see that not a lot of people are dying of Covid-19 per capita.

This is actually a powerful argument for shutting down economically until hospitals are able to handle the flow of emergency patients.

Which ironically is what has happened in virtually every state.

I just went to the Emergency Room in NY because my bladder shut down. They were prepared to see me with every doctor, nurse, and administrator wearing proper medical gear (masks and even shields). I received treatment immediately and have recovered.

At 64 if I catch covid-19 I would have probably a 2% to 3% chance of dying. So I am very fortunate that in NY the steps the state government have taken (albeit a few weeks too late) have reduced the hospitalizations due to Covid-19 substantially.

Not sure what this has to do with anything.

As a member of US society we all contribute to medical research. Ironically a vaccine for prior coronavirus strains was not able to be produced, though they tried. Probably in part because they were easily contained otherwise.

Now we all hope for an early vaccine.

But short of that if we pretend that it is worth having people die with no efforts at mitigation, then the people will shut down voluntarily. You will see this in states that open up religious gatherings.

In NY the first case spread profusely in New Rochelle (close to where I live) primarily because the infected man attended a Bar Mitzvah and a Synagogue. His children also spread it at school and other social events.

Even if you opened all economic activity, people wouldn't comply. The death rate for 10 to 20 year olds right now who get Covid is about 0.1% to 0.2%. What parent in their right mind would send their kid to a summer camp knowing that on average one or two kids there is likely to die from Covid-19?

Similarly, young people who work in congested areas (like meat packing plants or office buildings) will be thinking twice about going to work knowing that about 5 people per thousand at work will die without proper social distancing measures and protective gear.

I am all for re-opening society. But it must be done in a way that the entire population is willing to participate. To pretend that nobody cares about older people in their lives or that older people will be willing to risk their lives so that you can prosper is not real.

Estimates show now that if we went back to normal, lifting all protective measures it would take between 3 weeks and two months before individual states would be swamped with Covid-19 patients in their emergency rooms and the total US estimates would be back to 1,000,000 to 2,000,000 or possibly more. Check out this website if you are curious

Yeah, 100K...so far...under the strictest quarantine measures in history.

It's the projected deaths without having a lockdown that have had every country in the world taking unusual measures to deal with this pandemic.

If we could have waved a magic wand in 1 March and had every person in the US self quarantine for a straight month, there'd be like 3 deaths of COVID in the US and then you could say it's less dangerous than cutting your fingernails because probably 5 people died doing that last year.

When will everyone understand that there is nothing more important than opening the casinos and poker rooms ASAP no matter the price. The degens must be appeased at all cost. HURRY!

Blaming lower per capita test death rates in a place like SK on testing capability doesn’t really make any sense. Lower obesity/diabetes/heart disease rates are a far more likely reason.

You base your argument on false numbers. The number of dead will be between 100K and 200K WITH the economic shutdown, not because of it. Without the shutdown, it is hard to say what the death count could have been. Projections are anywhere from 500k to 7 million.

I guess I will ask it another way. YOu are establishing the idea that what we paid, directly and indirectly through the shutdown was too high a price to pay to save a few hundred thousand individuals who are older. OK. What is your reasonable amount that you think it is correct to save an 80 year old. How about a 70 year old. How about a 30 year old with asthma. How about an 8 year old with autoimmune disorders. Can you provide us your chart that shows what the resonable amount that you think can be spent to protect each type of life? Is your scale affected by what the person has accomplished, or should an 80 year old pulitzer prize winning writer be automatically less valuable than a 22 year old healthy unemployed couch surfer?

Good frak this is warped. No, you are not saying that one old person is worth 100 young, you are saying that the inconvenience or ephemeral impact of social distancing for a finite period of time of 100 people is worth less than the irrevocable death of a person.

It sets a dangerous precedent when politicians start declaring which groups of people are worth saving and which are not.

The reason that South Korea has limited spread of Covid-19 is not because of the overall health of their population. They had their first case at the same time the US did and they immediately had a huge spread of infections.

They limited the outbreak by quickly ramping up testing. They were able to test 10,000 people a day early on and so could test anyone who wanted or needed a test. In the US we were only testing those who were going to be hospitalized or frontline workers.

The other things that South Korea have done well:
- Contact tracing and quarantining (where again testing plays a huge role)
- Providing health care providers with PPE
- Having the entire population wear masks
- Everybody in South Korea has health insurance to cover Covid-19 expenses (and I believe they are even paying for foreigners)

The overall death rate in South Korea is about 2.4%. Current thinking in the US is that the death rate ultimately will be roughly 0.5% to 0.8% (right now it is close to 5.7% but that is strictly because the overall number of infected is unknown). So it is unclear if South Korea will end up having a lower death rate per infection than the US. It may very well be as you say because the health of their population is better.

But the spread of the disease has nothing to do with the health of the population. It has to do with methods of containment. Covid-19 has a deadly spread rate (R0) of between 2.3 and 3 regardless of the overall health of the population and if left unchecked anywhere, will likely spread to up to 60% to 70% of the population.

Oh, I see. I thought you meant SK had a lower death rate per infection. But I see now that I misread.

Yeah SK has done a nice job. Unfortunately we’re so far behind we’ll never be able to catch up.

Those are projections, and they appear to be wrong. Sweden has 4000 deaths and no lockdown. And you forget that you aren't saving these people, they are going to get coronavirus later. As it turns out, the disease isn't as deadly as people thought, so you aren't going to be seeing a million plus die in the us period.

We all live a finite time, so if you destroy some's experience of life for a significant portion of it then that is pretty irrevocable as well.

In my opinion, a bad quality of life is worse than death. Why is death so bad? Everyone of us here is going to die, you might as well be depressed your whole life because of it.

Since suspecbility to the disease has nothing to do with what you have accomplished or what sort of person you are, your examples of what various people are worth is pretty irrelevant.

How much is it worth? Not the price being paid. The economic disruption will measure in the trillions. You are NOT saving most of these people that are susceptible to the virus, you are delaying their death. This fear of the overflowed hospitals because states are reopening has not materialized. And ventilators just aren't that effective to begin with. So the overflow at the hospital doesn't even matter. If you cant be saved you cant be saved for the most part.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/healt...tors-survival/

Its a dangerous precedent when you restrict everyone's freedom to save a few people's lives.

I hate to break it to you, but your chances of dying are still 2% to 3%. They haven't changed. You think the virus is going to disappear because they delayed its spread?

So you test and confirm someone has coronavirus. How is that going to stop its spread? How are you going to track every person that person came into contact with? How would you even find their name? A lot of the spread would be among strangers. And even if you did, how would you get these people to cooperate?

These countries you mentioned that do this have had very low spread of the virus right from the get go. South Korea has had 11000 cases total. Contact tracing is a lot more effective when only a handful of people have it to begin with and society is very obedient and has a history of a very strong government with high amounts of surveillance. But it isn't going to work in America where there are over a million cases and the country is much more individualistic.

https://www.businessinsider.com/sout...utbreak-2020-5

This sort of government surveillance is just not allowed in America and for good reason.

And South Korea can keep trying this for a while, but again, the virus isn't going anywhere, inevitabally it will still spread and get the same number of people in South Korea it was going to get to begin with if they hadn't had any social distancing measures.

You aren't going to snuff the virus out by isolating everyone that has it and quarantining them for ever. That works if a few hundred people have it. But its spread too far to far flung areas of the globe for that to work anymore.

OK, so in order to get the qualityof life I want, I am justified in killing you? What moral framework gives you the right to make that call for others. And you do realize that this justification 'Death is irrelevant, as we all die, so others dying so that I can improve my quality of life' is almost indefensible in any ethical discussion, and can be used to justify, well, basically anything.

I think, at this point, you are just defending your position that you got backed into, because no sane person could defend the idea 'Decisions that cost lives to save money are OK, because we all die, and I would be sad if I was poor'

You are not answering the question. You established the moral framework that lives are relative in value, and that they have an economic price. What is that price? How much should I have to pay to pull the plug on your parents?

Edit: Yes, i know that last line was inflammatory. It was done on purpose. For many people, they are talking about lives and deaths as if it were a mathematical abstract. That last line was meant to put into [perspective that these people that some wish to sacrifice are, well, really people.

Hmmmm, you actually think restricting or regulating 'freedom' in the interest of public safety is a novel precedent just now being set? Really?

As spino is so committed to the notion of freedom, I presume after 9/11 he was against the PATRIOT ACT and the TSA too, not one of the ones saying "If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to worry about." (Not that the freedoms we are talking about are necessarily comparable - freedom to live without undue risk of death from COVID-19 versus freedom not to have your communications monitored by the government.)

You are correct, I am against the PATRIOT ACT.